Clicker, Air Mouse, Touch Panel, or Gesture Control?

A conference room has four ways to control the screen: a clicker, an air mouse, a touch panel, or gesture control. A clicker does two things from anywhere. An air mouse does everything a mouse does from anywhere, with a device to hold and pass around. A touch panel does everything, from one spot, for one person. Gesture control does what the air mouse does with nothing in your hand and no handoff: AirTouch reads the presenter's hand through a standard RGB camera and sends the mouse, keyboard, and touch input the room PC already understands. Which one a room needs depends on how many people present and how far they stand from the screen.

What can a clicker do?

Next, back, and usually a laser pointer and a blank-screen button. It is cheap, it works from across the room, and everybody knows how to use it. It also stops there. The moment a presenter wants to open a link, play a video, scroll a document, or annotate, they walk back to the laptop. And the clicker lives in one hand, so handing the room to the next presenter means handing over a device, or losing it in the couch.

Where it wins: a single presenter, a linear deck, and a budget of twenty dollars.

Is an air mouse better?

An air mouse is a handheld remote with motion sensing, so waving it moves the cursor and its buttons click. It solves the clicker's range problem: the presenter can open anything, scroll anything, and even type on a tiny keyboard on the back. The costs are a learning curve (gyro cursors drift and overshoot until you get used to them), batteries, pairing, and the same handoff problem as the clicker. In a room where three people take turns, the air mouse spends the meeting being passed across the table.

Where it wins: one presenter who needs more than next and back, and a room PC that is otherwise hard to reach.

What does a touch panel give you?

Full control, pen writing, and a clean one-vendor setup. It is the right answer for teams that sketch on the glass for hours. For presenting, it has a structural flaw: it pins the presenter to the front of the room with their back to the audience, and it pins control to one person at a time. It is also the most expensive option by a wide margin, as best smart board for a conference room lays out, and it usually replaces a display the room already owns.

Where it wins: heavy pen work and rooms with no display yet.

How does gesture control compare?

AirTouch gesture control and hand tracking software runs on the room PC or the presenter's laptop and uses a camera positioned for the room. A raised open palm takes the cursor, a pinch clicks, and mapped gestures send the keys a presentation app expects, so slides, links, videos, scrolling, and annotation all work from wherever the presenter stands. Control passes to the next person by raising a hand, with nothing to pass across the table. Patented intent detection identifies the presenter and filters out colleagues talking with their hands in most setups. With a suitable camera it works at 20 feet and beyond, and in touch mode the room display behaves like a touch screen for whiteboard apps, as covered in touch mode and multiple displays.

The limits are honest ones. Pen-on-glass still feels better than air drawing for long sketching sessions. Text entry is slow, so keep a keyboard on the table. The presenter needs to be in the camera's view, and rooms with strong backlight from a window may call for a specialized camera. The gesture map for slides is in gesture control for PowerPoint without a clicker.

Which should you choose?

Can a room keep its clicker?

Of course. AirTouch adds a source of input; it does not remove one. Many rooms keep the clicker in the drawer for the visiting presenter who prefers it and use gestures for everyone else, and a touch panel room can add a camera so people around the table can drive the panel without walking up to it. The office-wide picture, including rooms that run Zoom or Teams, is on gesture control for the office.

Where to start

Start a free trial on the laptop you present from, point its webcam at the front of the room, and run the next meeting without picking anything up. For a multi-room rollout, book a demo and we will suggest camera placement per room.

Related: 7 smart board alternatives, AirTouch vs Zoom and Teams built-in gestures, gesture control for lecture halls, AirTouch for PowerPoint, and gesture control and hand tracking software.